Aspies For Freedom

I've been spotted talking to myself as I walk alone to street.
I do this to organised my thoughts, examine ideas and rehearse what I'll say in certain situations.
Talking out loud holds my attention more easily than an internal dialogue.
It’s so important that I deliberately set aside time each day to ‘talk to myself’.

I’ve encountered people with Schizophrenia as well as others with AS; there is a distinct difference in the way Schizophrenic people talk to themselves as compared with those with AS and others.

A lot of my peers back in primary school thought that I was a schizophrenic homosexual, but they were a bunch of ignorants.

Admittedly I also talk to myself, but only when I believe that nobody can tell/hear me.

When I am idle, not doing much productive for an extended period of time, say even as little as a day or two, I get really paranoid and start having these thoughts, like, "Right behind me if I look there will be this creepy floating monster with a red and green eye" and things like that.

I also experience the sense as if there are all kinds of weird creatures coming up through the sinks and pipes, as well as the feeling of "knowing" that my house is bugged with listening devices and such. Actually a number of schizophrenic-like things I experience, but it always goes away for me if I am actively doing things (which is one reason why I'm taking four college classes this semester, as well as being active in five clubs at school and ten high school courses, plus a social life IRL and online discussion). I'm actually able to think much clearer, and be less over-reactive emotionally with regard to stress.

Whatever diagnosis some psychiatrist might want to give me at some point, I'm happy enough knowing I'm autistic with some other quirks. Labeling can be helpful sometimes, but even if I did fit the criteria for bipolar or schizophrenia or something, I don't have enough troubles at present that I would require any kind of intervention.

I'm the same...even now I can freak myself out occasionally.

Aren't we sensitive souls...LOL

I have no idea how I manage. That's the honest truth. I guess mainly it has to do with homework not being weighted heavily in my classes. I tend to do well on tests, getting mostly A and B grades, but am miserable at doing homework. I do my studying on the bus on the way to school, as well as the amount of homework I manage to complete (it takes about an hour by bus to get to my school). Also, my lit. class is easy, as we read the books in class and do the reading questions there, too, so there's no homework, just projects.

Last year, I was in a regular U.S. History class rather than AP, like I had taken for European History. However, since the homework was weighted as about 60% of the grade, and daily quizzes at about 10% (I was absent a lot), I ended up getting a C first semester and D second semester. Even though I got almost perfect scores on all the exams, including both mid-terms and finals.

Academics are really my thing, it's the mode of learning/working that usually trips me up. Foreign languages are the toughest there, so even though I acquire the language much quicker than many of my peers, it appears in class like I'm far behind, because the same autistic difficulties I have with English will also apply over to French, to Japanese...especially since I am very self-doubting about my abilities, so my confidence is significantly lower when speaking these languages, and for these languages, my ordinary difficulty understanding spoken language gets magnified, as I'm not used to hearing the sounds of the language 24/7 like I do with English.

It does feel like a contradiction, though, that I seem to be doing better with many classes, often classes considered harder, but when it comes to multi-tasking in trying to get dressed while watching TV is impossible. I guess that's because I never think about what I have to do for more than one class at a time. That way, I don't feel like I'm multi-tasking. It's really tough, though, but I guess I'm just more suited to tasks like test-taking and essay-writing than to doing worksheets and other assignments. If my academic performance were based purely on homework, I'd have flunked out of school long ago. I just never get around to doing it until ten minutes before class.

Oh, and I spend a lot of my time surfing sites like AFF

Woah, that's a lot of consecutive posts.

Don't tell me that your teachers are expecting you to speak French like the French people and Japanese like the Japs !!!!!

My God! Oh, please! It's impossible! If you were to listen to my pronounciation of English you'ld think i'm an ape-man ..... yet i FULLY understand both England's English as well as American English, and when it comes to writing i don't think i'm horrible!!  So tell your teachers to lower their expectations for God's sake!!

Learn the grammar, the vocabulary, the idioms and the orthography .... and you're there !!!!!

It is not that it is expected of me to speak it so fluently. However, even when people talk in English, it is often difficult to discern the sounds to understand what is being said. If I have been around someone for a long time, I am used to their voice and speaking patterns, and they are more understandable.

For a foreign language, I am not so used to hearing people speak it, so while other fellow students also have difficulty in understanding the language spoken, my difficulty is even more so, as my difficulty lays in both understanding what I hear and in the fact that I am not used to hearing the language. I often have to ask people speaking in English to slow down, to repeat things.

In fact, I'm actually much better at speaking with a (relatively) good accent than at understanding what is said to me. My best skill, for any language, is in writing, then reading, then speaking, then listening.

Also, one must keep in mind that I have frequent meltdowns, am in a positive social environment where I can be an "out" aspie and stim to my heart's content in public, frequently neglect my homework, and also have time extensions for my homework (I can turn things in as one big Packet per unit, so that way instead of dividing my time equally amongst things, I do all of one thing at a time).

I also am receiving services for alternative testing and am seeking for the next semester use of an audio recorder through the college Disability Support Services office, since I have immense difficulty understanding what is spoken. Not that I'm implying that everyone should be able to do the same things provided appropriate accomodations, as EvilZakkie said, everybody had different abilities and disabilities, and having more of one as opposed to the other doesn't make anyone inferior or superior to others, however the society mike like to have it.

It's kind of funny, actually. In one context, such as when I have a meltdown, am not speaking, having trouble understanding "simple" instructions, or am self-injuring, and someone who doesn't know me in day-to-day life, figures my life is constantly consisting of this. And people who see me in the academic context, when I'm studying alone or when looking at my test scores, think my life must be some parade of SUPERASPIE achievement. So I am at a point where I am academicaly ready for college, and have been for awhile, but don't know the first thing about living on my own, which I'll be doing in less than a year.

It's not always an enviable position to be, although for factors outside of academics, I have been afforded some significant advantages that many autistics don't have strictly because of society and individuals, as opposed to personal and biological inclinations. While we are financially poor, my parents have always accepted me as I am, and told me from when I was little that if I were lesbian they wouldn't care and love me just the same as if I weren't.

When I was diagnosed, they explained it as a neurological wiring difference, and my dad is himself on the spectrum. I've lately informed him of some of the things going on about autism, like the mercury militia, Clinton, and McCarthy, and he feels the same way, though I'm still working to show him http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org, http://rettdevil.blogspot.com, and http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com, as well as the rest of the wonderful world of autism blogging.

Clubs are also much easier to manage when you and maybe one friend are the only ones attending.

And also note that my post count has jumped way up in the last two weeks to a month. That's because I have a whole two weeks off for winter break, my college classes ended a week before high school and don't resume until a week after high school resumes. So I've posted more than 70 times since vacation, and by vacation's end, I will probably have tripled my starting post-count. (I'm procrastinating, though.)

Talking to yourself to rehearse what you are going to say at a later time, or to organize your thoughts, or to "decompress" or as a stim, is classic AS behaviour as far as I know. This kind of behaviour has absolutely nothing to do with schizophrenia, but I know someone who was (I am sure incorrectly) diagnosed as a schizophrenic because they had the habit of talking to themself. This person is from a family full of undiagnosed autistic people, and has autistic traits.

If you have a careful look at all of the DSM -IV diagnostic criteria for all of the different subtypes of schizophrenia, you will see that a person does not need to "hear voices" or experience delusions or have hallucinations to fit the diagnostic criteria for some types of schizophrenia. If a psychiatrist wants to fit an eccentric or unexpressive person who is sane into a schizophrenia diagnosis, the criteria are so loose that it is possible.

I don't know about that. I think that such is possible with the Schizoid and Schizotypical labels though.